I am currently focused on the development of several homebrew game projects. The first of them is a Tetris clone (it's a project that for lack of time I have not been able to continue with its development until now) that I have called "Tetris: The Soviet Mind Game" in honor of the unlicensed game of the same title developed by TENGEN for NES.

The game right now is in a very initial state however it is playable. As you can see in the following screenshots it consists of a first screen of presentation to which I would like to see some more and a menu screen in which the user can select the level of difficulty and see a screen that is accessed to a list of records.

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The game still has no sound effects or music and is in fact one of the immediate tasks I want to undertake. After pressing the START button you can directly access the main game screen, which is divided into two zones.

In this second section I would like to add a score marker and another marker that reflects the level of difficulty just below the table dedicated to visualize the next piece that is offered to the player.

On the other hand, apart from the typical pieces that are part of the classic Tetris game I would like to add more rare pieces like those that can be seen in some portable Tetris machines made in China. So if you have any idea of a Tetris piece design that meets these characteristics, please indicate how they are to be added to the final set. Since the game is still under development so any idea or contribution is allowed.

Just a heads-up - though I can probably provide a billion more of these "do and don't" points on Tetris along the way - regarding the randomizer, you definitely want some sort of protection against crappy RNG. The SNES Tetris games have completely random piece selection and are horrible for it. The original NES game however will always reroll exactly once if it gets the same piece twice in a row, so that this will happen with lower frequency than you'd expect from pure randomness.This doesn't really make the game as lenient as it would sound - it's still way more fierce than most newer versions of Tetris - but it definitely makes the selection of pieces feel less absurd to the player, and improves the idea of the actual puzzle, which is centered around finding a place for every possible piece - not five S pieces in a row.

EDIT: Another thing I noticed in the video... it seems you are only rotating your pieces clockwise? Any reason for that? I would assume you are planning on using both buttons for rotations.

Just a heads-up - though I can probably provide a billion more of these "do and don't" points on Tetris along the way - regarding the randomizer, you definitely want some sort of protection against crappy RNG. The SNES Tetris games have completely random piece selection and are horrible for it. The original NES game however will always reroll exactly once if it gets the same piece twice in a row, so that this will happen with lower frequency than you'd expect from pure randomness. This doesn't really make the game as lenient as it would sound - it's still way more fierce than most newer versions of Tetris - but it definitely makes the selection of pieces feel less absurd to the player, and improves the idea of the actual puzzle, which is centered around finding a place for every possible piece - not five S pieces in a row.

I understand what you want to say and it makes sense. It makes sense to generate a logic so that the random generation does not mess up.

Sumez wrote:

EDIT: Another thing I noticed in the video... it seems you are only rotating your pieces clockwise? Any reason for that? I would assume you are planning on using both buttons for rotations.

As I say in the first post, the game is in a very early version of development so for the moment only the pieces are allowed to rotate in one direction, but the idea is that in the final version the A and B buttons can be used to turn the pieces in both directions.

I understand what you want to say and it makes sense. It makes sense to generate a logic so that the random generation does not mess up.

Not so much "mess up" as basically the fact that "true random" (within a computers pseudo-random capabilities that is) doesn't really feel "random" to a human. More than a few of the same piece in a row will feel wrong even if it's perfectly viable. More importantly though, it just isn't fun to deal with.

The NES version of Tetris is more "fair" than pure random, but only to a certain extend - You still have absolutely no way to guess what the next piece will be after the current preview. The GB version is very similar, but the RNG method is extremely bad, and it's always biased in favor of some pieces over others.The TGM series takes the reroll to a much larger degree, rerolling multiple times and remembering the last four pieces instead of just the last one. The result is a Tetris game that's much easier to deal with on low gravity, but the game amps up the difficulty in other areas instead.

There's a TON of really deep theory behind a simple seeming game like Tetris. A lot of minor things matter a lot to people who play Tetris on a high level. Stuff like how long it waits before spawning a piece after a previous one locks, how the pieces rotate, how fast the pieces move when you hold down left or right, or how long it needs to "charge" before it starts repeating. Even minor differences tends to make a big impact on gameplay in a game like this, which is why people have very strong opinions on the various different implementations of Tetris.

FrankenGraphics wrote:

You might want to call it "the soviet mind game" instead of the full title for legal reasons. I think i can recall the title is privately owned.

Yeah Tetris is a trademark, and they are pretty aggressive about it. Just wait till tepples discovers this thread.

Even some of the parameters (field dimensions, standard piece set) are copyrighted, as a U.S. judge ruled in June 2012. This led me to withdraw a project from public availability. It also led me to realize how e-sports are less legitimate than ball sports.

The thing about the field size and piece set is really up for debate and has indeed spawned many debates since that verdict - many people, myself included, would defend the fact that the playfield dimensions (10x20) and available pieces (literally every single possible shape you can make with a tetramino) are pretty much a mathematical requirement for the game concept to work - a concept which they do not own a patent for. As such, it seems like a gross mistake to consider these aspects a part of the Tetris copyright.

I'm pretty sure, however, that The Tetris Company have never sued anyone who haven't tried to make money off the concept. Stuff like Cultris and Nullpomino still exists and never had a lot of issues as far as I'm aware.

And yeah, calling Tetris a "sport" while at the same time defending the exclusive rights to license anything playing like it, is just repulsive.

I make this humble post because so many people close Tetris not realizing how much more one can do than Game Boy Tetris.

Good points. The original idea was to create a clone that resembles the classic from a playable point of view.

Sumez wrote:

The NES version of Tetris is more "fair" than pure random, but only to a certain extend - You still have absolutely no way to guess what the next piece will be after the current preview. The GB version is very similar, but the RNG method is extremely bad, and it's always biased in favor of some pieces over others. The TGM series takes the reroll to a much larger degree, rerolling multiple times and remembering the last four pieces instead of just the last one. The result is a Tetris game that's much easier to deal with on low gravity, but the game amps up the difficulty in other areas instead.

Okay. Thank you for providing such good information regarding the random generation of parts. It really is an interesting topic that I take note of.

FrankenGraphics wrote:

You might want to call it "the soviet mind game" instead of the full title for legal reasons. I think i can recall the title is privately owned.

Yes, it's just what I was thinking.

tepples wrote:

Even some of the parameters (field dimensions, standard piece set) are copyrighted, as a U.S. judge ruled in June 2012. This led me to withdraw a project from public availability. It also led me to realize how e-sports are less legitimate than ball sports.

I had no idea about this. However today you can find repositories of source code with the implementation of Tetris made in languages such as Java or C / C ++. These Tetris clones use the same set of pieces as the original. In any case this makes me rethink things about the game.

For RHDE, whose build phase closely resembles that of Rampart, I decided to reverse engineer the rules by which the pieces in Rampart were chosen, so that they aren't considered quite as arbitrary of a set (and thus not as large of a creative effort). I ended up with "pentominoes and smaller polyominoes that fit in a 3x3 box and don't contain the O tetromino". I imagine that Atari Games rejected the O because it produces an undesirable 2-cell-thick wall and rejected pieces that don't fit in 3x3 because it would complicate movement and rotation.

Robert Pelloni made a Tetris clone for his RPG Bob's Game that used an 8x16 field (like Dr. Mario) and the six trikings instead of the seven tetrominoes. Polykings are like polyominoes except that blocks can also be connected diagonally.

A lot of minor things matter a lot to people who play Tetris on a high level. Stuff like how long it waits before spawning a piece after a previous one locks, how the pieces rotate, how fast the pieces move when you hold down left or right, or how long it needs to "charge" before it starts repeating. Even minor differences tends to make a big impact on gameplay in a game like this, which is why people have very strong opinions on the various different implementations of Tetris.

tepples wrote:

Even some of the parameters (field dimensions, standard piece set) are copyrighted, ...

A program can have a lot of options to change such things as, field dimensions (and perhaps even geometry), piece sets (both fully custom and defining by rules are possible, so the tetrominoes need not be programmed in), various stuff about timing, visibility, and a lot of other stuff. And then, is not Tetris; it is a superset.

You can make derivatives of Tetris by changing factors such as the playfield size and available pieces yes, but as I was pointing out in another post, these aren't just randomly chosen! There's a perfect mathematical beauty to Tetris where everything matches up perfectly and ensures an incredible depth to the puzzle that makes up the game.A lot of pople see Tetris as a fun casual game, but there's really a lot more to the game. Add or remove two cells from the width of the playfield and you have a completely different puzzle that might be fun to play for a while but in no way has the same absurd lastability as the classic Tetris recipe.

The thing is - game mechanics can't be copyrighted. It might sound a bit absurd, but you can make a complete copy of an existing game as long as you don't use any recognizable assets that should be considered a part of the game's copyright. Of course, what constitutes a copyrightable asset is a grey area, but since the selection of pieces and the dimensions of the playfield are central to the game mechanics of Tetris, I think it's dead wrong to consider them as such, and the court that made the descision referenced by tepples failed to see this.This robs any other developers the opportunity of creating a competing Tetris styled puzzle game that is better than the officially licensed games, and the reality of the situation is exactly that now we are stuck with official releases which are absolutely horrible for competitive single player gameplay due to a ridiculously stupid ruleset being enforced by The Tetris Company.Yes, this is how much people care about Tetris.

I have found one of my old Tetris machines built in China and I have managed to make it work to see the set of rare pieces that are included in it and that are not part of the original set of Tetris pieces. Let's see if I take some time and try to make a small design of them using the GBTD tool.

Sumez wrote:

You can make derivatives of Tetris by changing factors such as the playfield size and available pieces yes, but as I was pointing out in another post, these aren't just randomly chosen! There's a perfect mathematical beauty to Tetris where everything matches up perfectly and ensures an incredible depth to the puzzle that makes up the game.

It's just what I was thinking about doing.

Sumez wrote:

The thing is - game mechanics can't be copyrighted. It might sound a bit absurd, but you can make a complete copy of an existing game as long as you don't use any recognizable assets that should be considered a part of the game's copyright. Of course, what constitutes a copyrightable asset is a grey area, but since the selection of pieces and the dimensions of the playfield are central to the game mechanics of Tetris, I think it's dead wrong to consider them as such, and the court that made the descision referenced by tepples failed to see this. This robs any other developers the opportunity of creating a competing Tetris styled puzzle game that is better than the officially licensed games, and the reality of the situation is exactly that now we are stuck with official releases which are absolutely horrible for competitive single player gameplay due to a ridiculously stupid ruleset being enforced by The Tetris Company.Yes, this is how much people care about Tetris.

It's a very interesting debate and the truth is that I agree with you.

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